‘words (λόγοι, logoi) of THE WORD (Του Λόγου, Tou Logou)’ponders the Sacred Scriptures, the Sacred Liturgy,Fathers of the Church and RCIAas a response to the call for a New Evangelizationthat by the grace of God the Holy Spiritall may encounterGod the Son, Jesus the Incarnate Wordand be drawn in love as adopted children toGod our Father Who is Merciful Love.

Voices ever ancient, ever new. Lent, Week 2: Saturday

“... and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them.” (Luke 15:12)

“You see that the divine inheritance is given to those who ask. You should not think that the Father was guilty because he gave to the younger son. There is no frail age in the kingdom of God nor is faith weighed down by years. He who made the request surely judged himself worthy. If only he had not departed from his Father, he would not have known the hindrance of age. After he went abroad, he who departed from the church squandered his inheritance. “After,” it says, “leaving his home and country, he went abroad into a distant country.” What is farther away than to depart from oneself, and not from a place?… Surely whoever separates himself from Christ is an exile from his country, a citizen of the world. We are not strangers and pilgrims, but we are “fellow citizens of the saints and of the household of God,” for we who were far away have come near in the blood of Christ. Let us not look down on those who return from a distant land, because we were also in a distant land, as Isaiah teaches. “To them that dwelled in the region of the shadow of death, light has risen.” There is a distant region of the shadow of death, but we, for whom the Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord, live in the shadow of Christ. The church therefore says, “Under his shadow I desired and sat down.” (Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, 7)

O God, Who grant us by glorious healing
remedies while still on earth
to be partakers of the things of heaven,
guide us, we pray, through this present life
and bring us to that light in which You dwell.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to You Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen.

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About Me

Fr Mark is a Roman Catholic diocesan priest of the Philadelphia Archdiocese teaching full-time as an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and as an Instructor in the Graduate Counseling Program at Holy Family University in Philadelphia, PA. Having earned a doctorate in Sacred Theology under the guidance of the late Fr Ambrose Eßzer OP at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Rome), Fr Mark also serves the Church as an adjunct professor at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary teaching Patrology and Sacramental Theology. In October 2016, he began serving a term as a consultant to the Communications Committee, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. When not engaged in teaching, he pursues scholarship in the areas of Teilhard de Chardin, Eastern Patrology, Sacred Scripture, Liturgy, RCIA and the New Evangelization. He also devotes some time to increasing skills in the areas of html5, php, mysql, Wordpress and apps as an Apple® and Helix (Macintosh database) developer. Over the years, he has dabbled in the ‘man cave’ of his cabinetry and welding tool shop and, as a former electrician and boilermaker, did volunteer work for a non-profit housing organization.